Less trigger happy AI

[Hairy Mouse]

Is there a way to lower the priority of team to take lethal shots, or to have them take cover and hold fire until commanded?

They are all acting like T1 trigger happy maniacs, and then they wanna whine about their mental state after they annihilate anything with a pulse. I'm trying to only use deadly force when there's no other option, but I can't even seem to get a chance to use a less lethal before my team makes smoke em.

Their mental health degrades so fast from killing people, and its totally avoidable. In a situation where we may be taking fire but be safe behind cover, where I can bounce a flash or stinger in, and use a taser, and we're not in any immediate danger, they want to rush the suspect around the corner before or same time as the flash goes off, and kill the suspect.

For one, the situation was under control and could have been handled non-lethal. For two, they put themselves in danger buy running blindly around a corner under gunfire.

Non only do they want to kill suspects and lower their mental health, they unnecessarily risk injury or death for themselves.

There's no way to command them to only fire if they themselves are being shot at, or I fire first, or command them to hold fire?

[Graywolf364]

I recently wrote a post discussing this in more detail (which was promptly lost in the shuffle) but I suspect the mag dumping was an overcorrection to better show off the new secondary transition feature.

Right now they act like a bunch of poorly trained patrol officers prone to panic firing and contagious shooting. Often at the expense of 360 security.

They need to start shooting in more controlled five shot bursts and not all engaged in a group. The rest the of stack doesn't need to mag dump if the first few shooters have the gunfight pretty well handled. They also need to stop shooting past each other. Especially now that they have better muzzle awareness. Something that was even mentioned in the promotional video for 1.0.

[Hairy Mouse]

Originally posted by Graywolf364:

I recently wrote a post discussing this in more detail (which was promptly lost in the shuffle) but I suspect the mag dumping was an overcorrection to better show off the new secondary transition feature.

Right now they act like a bunch of poorly trained patrol officers prone to panic firing and contagious shooting. Often at the expense of 360 security.

They need to start shooting in more controlled five shot bursts and not all engaged in a group. The rest the of stack doesn't need to mag dump if the first few shooters have the gunfight pretty well handled. They also need to stop shooting past each other. Especially now that they have better muzzle awareness. Something that was even mentioned in the promotional video for 1.0.

I also noticed them getting all worked up when and enemy starts firing, seemingly panic firing like you said, and I've had them move right in front of my muzzle pointing through a door.

I've also had them shoot me when I start taking fire, and try to maneuver to cover quickly. They start panic firing and hit me while I'm moving.

I just wish the commands had more granular control. Fire at will, hold fire, take cover, fire when team leader does, etc. I feel like the AI could at least be SUFFICIENT and more manageable, if you had access to those extra commands.

[Graywolf364]

Originally posted by Hairy Mouse:

Originally posted by Graywolf364:

I recently wrote a post discussing this in more detail (which was promptly lost in the shuffle) but I suspect the mag dumping was an overcorrection to better show off the new secondary transition feature.

Right now they act like a bunch of poorly trained patrol officers prone to panic firing and contagious shooting. Often at the expense of 360 security.

They need to start shooting in more controlled five shot bursts and not all engaged in a group. The rest the of stack doesn't need to mag dump if the first few shooters have the gunfight pretty well handled. They also need to stop shooting past each other. Especially now that they have better muzzle awareness. Something that was even mentioned in the promotional video for 1.0.

I also noticed them getting all worked up when and enemy starts firing, seemingly panic firing like you said, and I've had them move right in front of my muzzle pointing through a door.

I've also had them shoot me when I start taking fire, and try to maneuver to cover quickly. They start panic firing and hit me while I'm moving.

I just wish the commands had more granular control. Fire at will, hold fire, take cover, fire when team leader does, etc. I feel like the AI could at least be SUFFICIENT and more manageable, if you had access to those extra commands.

First I would like to acknowledge that getting the friendly team AI squared away is an incredibly challenging task. The nuances of working in a team environment are hard to replicate. And that's before you factor in the inherent challenges of a game medium. Friendly AI is still pretty terrible but it's a lot better than it was before and I do genuinely applaud the developers to taking the time to improve it.

But right now the AI is not believable as a team. Not even a hasty entry team. It's very obvious that they are on rails. They just go along the predetermined track with little regard to what's happening around them and if something gets in their way (like the player) they get stopped in their tracks without being able to go around or adjust. That level of adaptability and awareness is a challenging thing to implement and it will never be perfect but it's worth the work. What sells authenticity in my opinion is not the 'look at me I'm so adult' environmental storytelling but the idea of working with a well-drilled tactical team. We aren't there yet.

This on rails AI is particularly glaring when it comes to dynamic entries. A core experience of the game.

During a dynamic entry each shooter crossing the threshold and has a specific area of responsibility. Their safety relies on the other shooters in the stack being immediately behind them watching their own area of responsibility. If the second shooter in the stack is too slow through the door and/or not paying attention to their assigned area of responsibility, the first guy in the stack is almost guaranteed to take a hit in the back or side from anyone lurking in the hard corner that's out of view. That's on top of the extremely high risk of catching a round in the front plate as the first shooter through the door. It's all about exploding through the threshold as fast as possible with overwhelming force. Personally I'm much more of a fan of threshold method/limited pen, but the point still stands. Survival depends on the other members of the team doing their job in the right place and at the right time.

Despite the many improvements, the friendly AI doesn't come close to doing that. They are much too slow through the door so every shooter making entry is overexposed. They focus on the wrong areas at the wrong time. And will routinely neglect their areas of responsibility in the presence of any NPC (suspect or civilian) instead of relying on overlapping fields of fire and maintaining security. They cannot be trusted clear rooms on their own and really can't be trusted to have your back. The core gameplay is less about tactics and more about how well you can hold your own in a gunfight. Which is fun in moderation but can quickly get frustrating. Better AI is not preclude the player from getting into tense gunfights if they want.

When they do engage, it's often a disaster. They either mag dump at a drop of a hat with very few good hits and at the aforementioned expensive maintaining 360 security. Other team members, the player, and civilians in the crossfire be damned. Or take an abnormally long time to return fire despite actively being shot at.

My hope for the eventual state of the AI is that it's much more autonomous. I don't want to spend the game staring at menus micromanaging. I would be perfectly happy if the AI were able to complete levels entirely on their own. Which I know from previous discussions is a bit of a controversial statement, but I will point out that since you are the team leader you're responsibility isn't gunfighting but leading your fellow officers in a good and thorough cleaning plan. But we are very far from that point.

To that end, if we can't trust in your friendlies artificial judgment. At the very least I would like more control of what's there. As I said, I rather not spend the game frantically scrolling through menus but until the SWAT AI is improved I rather be staring at menus then rely on their sluggish and subpar decision making.

Hold fire and fire on my lead are particularly necessary because of the ridiculous insistence on mission objectives that require you to arrest a certain number of suspects. Since your team members will dump 300 rounds into any suspect they see, even if said suspect is facing the other direction and hasn't seen you yet. It means you have to tackle the objective without them as support. Some sort of hold fire command lets you tackle the ludacris objective well still giving you support if things go to guns.